A member of The Association of Graveyard Rabbits~~~~
As I say in my Find a Grave profile,
"There is a story under every stone".
While photographing graves for Find A Grave or genealogy research, I have come across many interesting stories about the people buried under those tombstones. In this blog I will share some of the most interesting of these stories with you. Why? So these people will not be forgotten.
~~~~~Jim Craig - Evanston, Illinois USA - Contact me at: jwcraig11@comcast.net

Friday, May 17, 2013

AKSEL MIKKELSEN - A Message from Norway

You will remember the story I wrote earlier this year of Chicago policeman Aksel Mikkelsen. Several months after the death of his wife Hulda Olsen Mikkelsen, Aksel killed himself at Hulda's grave in Mount Olive Cemetery in Chicago. When I am researching families for this blog it is very difficult for me to keep track of everybody so I usually create a family tree on ancestry.com for the family I am researching. That makes it easier to remember all of the relationships and it also gives me access to ancestry's search feature where they search their many databases for information on the people you put in a tree. So, back on February 10, 2013 I put a family tree on ancestry.com that I called "Aksel Mikkelsen Family."

Imagine my surprise when I got an email last week from ancestry.com that said:

Hello !

I'm contacting you on behalf of Kjetil Straume and wife in Norway. They are searching for both acendants and decendants of Aksel Mikkelsen. Would you like to get in contact with them? Aksel was brother of Kjetil Straume's wife's great-great grandmother.

They would be very happy if you could email them.

Best Regards, Liv Christin Markussen, Norway.

I would be happy to contact the Straume family with the information I had, but since the story was a sad one, I was not sure how to approach them. So, I responded:

Hello from Chicago!

Liv Christin Markussen contacted me through
ancestry.com asking about the forebearers and descendents of Aksel Mikkelsen. I
am not related to him - I started doing research on his family for a story about
him that I wrote for my blog. The story is in two parts:

Virtually
all of the information I have on the Mikkelsen family is contained in these two
articles. I suggest you read them and then you can contact me if you are
looking for more information. Unfortunately the story of Aksel Mikkelsen does
not have a happy ending, but I present it as it
happened.

Jim Craig
Evanston,
Illinois
USA

This way I was able to give them all the information I had on the family, and they could answer or not answer as they wished. The very next day I got the following response from Kjetil and Inger Straume:

Hello from Oslo, Norway!

Dear Jim,

My wife and I thank you so much for your e-mail! The story of Axel and his family is truly sad, and also very touching. We also want to thank you very much for your work and effort to find out, and tell, the story behind a tombstone. In addition to being of interest to anyone concerned with our ancestor's life, this has for us made it possible to get knowledge about " a lost member of the family" and his destiny. We are very grateful to you!

We have not yet found out where, and when Axel's father was
born. He is told to have emigrated to USA, and that he died there before 1875,
as Charlotte is registered as a widow in the Christiania (Oslo) census
1875.

We have a picture of Charlotte - but not as a normal
portrait! It is a over a hundred years old jig saw puzzle! This is the only
picture we have of her, and the same is for her daughter Olivia. I will send
you a copy of Charlotte's picture in a separate mail. The picture puzzle of
Olivia is now with my wife's sister who lives in Bourgogne, France, and we look
forward to have a photo of this too, when she has puzzled it!

Again, thank you so much!

Sincerely,

Inger and Kjetil Straume

Here's the puzzle picture of Charlotte:

Charlotte Albertine Berg Mikkelsen

I was very pleased that they were happy with the articles that I wrote about their family. Here's my reply to my new friends in Norway:

Hello Inger and Kjetil -

Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? Through
it we get to meet and communicate with people all over the world. I am very
pleased that you liked the story I wrote about Axel and his family. It was a
tragedy, to be sure. I say in my blog that I try not to judge the actions of
people I did not know, but it is very hard to imagine what must have been going
through Axel's mind just before he killed himself. How could he have done that
to his children? They had already lost their mother, a traumatic experience for
any age, and now they were going to lose their father as well - and the family
would be broken up. It is only by the grace of God, and the strength of their
extended family, that they turned out as well as they did.

In my research
about your family I tried to find out if any other members of Axel's family were
here in Chicago. We know that Hulda had a large family here buit I was never
able to find any relatives of Axel's here. There were other Mikkelsens in
Chicago, and there are even other Mikkelsens buried at Mount Olive, but I could
never connect Axel to any of them.

Do you have any evidence of any of
Axel's relatives in Chicago?

Now I have a favor to ask of you: Could I
add the information you have given me to the information already on my blog? I
would like to tell my readers how a member of Axel's family contacted me, and
also include the other family information you have given me. I will not publish
your email address, of course, and I don't even need to use you names unless you
want me to. I would very much like to add this additional information to Axel's
story as I have told it so far. Let me know if this is OK with you. I would
also like to include the photo of Charlotte.

I'm sure you have cousins
here in the US - Lillie Mikkelsen Hansen had a large family; August had two
sons. Have you made contact with any cousins in the US?

That's all for
now. Thank you again for your kind words.

Your friend in
Chicago,

Jim Craig

As I mentioned when I wrote the article about Axel's suicide that I couldn't imagine how Axel could have felt that his children would be better off with him dead. They were already grieving over the loss of Hulda, as he was, but how could he leave five young children orphans? Inger had a very interesting response to my comment:

Hello Jim,

Yes, internet is truly wonderful. Without the
internet it would have been impossible to find all the information we can find
today, and to communicate all over the world so quickly.

You can of course feel free to use all the
information we have sent you (and hopefully will send you later), and the
picture of Charlotte. It is also quite OK to mention our names. We will also
appreciate if you mention that it was Liv Christin who found out all this for
us, if she agree. I will send her a copy of this mail, and believe she will
send you a mail and tell if this is OK or not with her.

I think that when a person commit a suicide, he or
she is in a situation of total darkness, where it is impossible to think
sensibly, to see any alternative, or to overwiew the consequences for others. I
think too, it is impossible for us to understand such an action, although we can
try to find out what led to it.

Until now we don't know very much about Axel's
brothers who emigrated to USA and their families. In Norway we have an
internet site to help people to trace their ancestors and families: www.disnorge.no English
version: http://www.disnorge.no/cms/en/eng/english-pages It is quite
free of charge to use this site. This is where we had the excellent help from
Liv Christin.

One has to be logged in to see the names of those
who have written a post here. Anyone can sign in as a guest user, and then you
will see the names. Without signing in, it shows only "Skjult navn" which means
Hidden name. This is because google shall not be able to pick up the names.
Therefore we also only use the first name in the posts which are open without
logging in.

There is also a lady in Minnesota, Margit Nysetvold
Bakke, who is very helpful with the connections between USA and Norway.
Here are links to her sites:

I think Inger and Kjetil are correct: Axel was in a situation where it was impossible to think sensibly or to see any alternative. How sad for him, and his family.

As Inger and Kjetil suspected, Liv Christin was happy to give her permission to be included in this article as well:

Hello Jim!

And thank You for giving us information about what happened to
the Mikkelsen family. Tragic and touching!

It has been a pleasure for me
to partisipate in the searchings for Johan Fredrik and Charlotte Mikkelsens
story and decendants, and it is okay for me that to be mentioned in Your blog
regarding the Mikkelsen Story. This story has truly captured my
heart.

Thank You so much for all Your reasearch and work regarding both
Mikkelsen family and other familys. that You have been tracking. It means a lot
for us that are searching for lost and unknown parts of our familys.

I checked out the website for Fortunalife and found a quote that I felt was very thought-provoking so I will share it with you:

So, through the miracle of the internet, we are still thinking about and talking about Aksel Mikkelsen, the Chicago policeman who died almost one hundred fifteen years ago. I was glad that my research was able to fill in some of the gaps in the Mikkelsen family tree. I have a feeling that we have not heard the last of Aksel Mikkelsen and Hulda Olsen Mikkelsen - we shall see!

May all of the departed members of the Mikkelsen Family rest in peace.